


To Change That Part

by collectivision



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don’t copy to another site, Gen, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Sibling Bonding, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 08:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18048740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collectivision/pseuds/collectivision
Summary: 'We can't leave Vanya, Klaus,' Ben is saying.He knows he can't. Klaus has too many bad memories of being left alone in the dark against his will to wish it on anyone else. And apparently he wasn't the only one Father Dearest inflicted that particular trauma on. So while it's easier to let Luther usher them out of the creepy basement, it isn't right.'Go on,' he says. 'I'll catch up.'





	To Change That Part

**Author's Note:**

> In which Ben is present for the reveal of Vanya's imprisonment and encourages Klaus to be a better person. Because it upsets me that they all let Luther win.
> 
> I've never actually posted anything before so let's hope this works and that they're not too out of character.

It's easier to let Luther usher them all out of the creepy basement and into the elevator. Luther’s too big, too strong to fight directly, has been since they were kids, and if he wouldn’t even let Allison change his mind when they all knew he was sweet on her then no-one else stood a chance. So it’s easier to look away from Vanya screaming soundlessly at them, face streaked with tears and slapping her palms against the glass, than to go against One. Easier, but not right.

He can feel his mouth moving, hear his voice spewing nonsense about Dear Old Dad and his more awful aspects as the elevator rises. Seriously, how had none of them known about this before? He’s trying to break the tension, to ignore the way Allison is glaring and Diego is already trying to compartmentalise everything into a neat little box. It’s a poor distraction from the way he can’t get Vanya’s face out of his head.

He’s not entirely sold on her having powers. Not Vanya, who’d always been so ordinary. Not Vanya, who’d provided much of the soundtrack of his childhood, so many of his memories underscored by the sound of a violin from the next room. (But if she’d really been so ordinary, why had their father kept her around? He’d never had time for any of them unless they were useful.) If there’s one thing Klaus knows, however, it’s being scared of what you could do when your power ran unchecked. He’d recognised the fear on her face. Knew it from the mirror when he was coming down without another hit to hand. When the nightmares crept in and he couldn’t banish the ghosts.

_You need to control your fear, Number Four._

So maybe Vanya does have powers and she’s the one who slit Allison’s throat. That’s still no reason to lock her up in the surprise soundproof chamber under the house. And actually, that’s a pretty solid piece of evidence in the Vanya-has-powers box. He doesn’t blame her for it. Lord knows there’d been times he’d wanted to shut Allison up when she was rumouring them into doing whatever she wanted. And if Allison is saying it was an accident and isn’t blaming her, he can’t see why Luther’s being so stubborn about it. But Luther’s always been impossible to reason with when Allison is hurt.

Locking Vanya up isn’t going to help her learn to control it. Luther’s acting like it hadn’t taken them years to work out the limits of their own powers as kids. And locking them in inescapable boxes had never worked for Dad as a training tool. Nobody does their best work running scared. 

_Three more hours._

The elevator comes to a stop and Klaus springs for the door, hauls it open and stumbles out. Scientific fact: small spaces with Luther in them get exponentially smaller the longer you’re forced to stay in them. He falters in the hallway. Luther is trying desperately to get Allison’s attention, to explain, but Allison ignores him, notebook held down at her side. Diego will probably end up wherever Mom is. And then there’s Ben, in his way with that look on his face that means he disapproves of Klaus’s life choices. He makes a face and pulls up short because walking through Ben is always awful and Diego nearly trips over him.

‘You know we can’t leave her there,’ Ben’s saying. And he can’t. He has too many bad memories of being left alone in the dark against his will to wish it on anyone else. The jitter in his step and the shake in his hands isn’t just the withdrawal wracking his body. He staggers sideways.

_Klaus! Klaus! Klaus!_

‘Klaus?’

‘Hmm?’ He snaps his head up, away from Ben and shakes it to clear away the phantoms from the crypt. Counts to four. They’re just a memory. Luther’s looking at him in question, impatience written in every line of his overlarge body.

‘Are you coming?’

Klaus walks his fingers up his chest and laces them together over Dave’s dog tags as his gaze flicks between Ben and Luther. He dodges the hand Ben raises to point back at the elevator and rocks back on his heels. Sucks in air through his teeth. Shuts his eyes and drops his chin.

‘We can’t leave Vanya, Klaus,’ Ben insists, because shutting his eyes to keep out the dead hasn’t ever worked.

‘No, no, no, no, I know. I just—Go on, I’ll catch up.’

‘Are you sure?’ Diego asks and Klaus glances at him. His hands are halfway raised like he’s ready to reach out and keep him steady. It’s always Diego that double checks—especially since his return to the present. ‘Are you okay?’

He nods, probably a few too many times to be believable, but that’s whatever. He lets go of Dave’s tags with his left hand to rub his temple and flutter his fingers in Diego’s direction. Lets his eyes close again in a wince. ‘Headache. It’s fine, I just need a moment.’

There are advantages to being the known drug addict in the family, and that’s that no-one bothers to question him again when he whines about withdrawal symptoms. Luther sighs, and Klaus doesn’t need to look to know he’s rolling his eyes at him.

He listens as their footsteps recede down the hall and their voices grow indistinct. He hears a door open and shut and then there’s nothing but silence. ‘They’re gone,’ says Ben.

Klaus doesn’t wait to see if they’ll be coming back. The apocalypse is over apparently—according to Five—and he can’t see them checking on him or Vanya again for a while. He whirls back towards the elevator, holds the door open long enough for Ben to follow him in, and mashes the down button with his palm.

‘Now that I think about it,’ he says, staring through the grate at the old stonework of the elevator shaft. ‘It never made sense that Vanya didn’t have powers. Seven of us, born at the same time on the same day, to women who weren’t pregnant, and only six of us get powers? What are the chances?’

He knows he’s babbling, but it’s that or think about how this is an elevator with only two destinations. There’s the basement of the house and the sub-sub level however many tens of metres further down that houses Vanya’s personal childhood nightmare. He’s not sure why he’s still surprised by proof that their father should never have been allowed to raise children, let alone ones with powers, but he is.

Ben shrugs. Of all of them, his power had been the most inexplicable. What was super strength or talking to the dead or the ability to jump through space when you had literal inter-dimensional monsters living under your skin? And with all that going on in their family, Vanya was still the weird one for being ‘normal’.

He doesn’t have to ponder that for very long because the elevator reaches the bottom of the shaft and he can see Vanya. She’s still leaning against the door, still crying, but she’s not beating against the glass anymore. Klaus is viscerally reminded of how it felt to be locked in the mausoleum; petrified, but too exhausted to do anything except huddle in the corner and weep. No-one deserves that. He almost trips in his rush to get out of the elevator and get closer to her.

‘Oh, Vanya. No, no, no. I’m sorry,’ he mutters.

She can’t hear him, but she must catch his movement in her peripheral vision because she looks up. He watches her mouth shape his name and the desperate hope in her eyes has him smiling down at her, pressing his right hand to the glass so she can read the ‘HELLO’ tattooed there. Her hand comes up to press against his through the glass, mouth moving again. She’s going to make him cry. 

‘I’m gonna get you out,’ he says. Hopes he looks reassuring, hopes Luther hasn’t spun the wheel on the door so far no-one else can turn it back. Which really would be just his luck. Ben’s joined her inside the chamber, invisible, but at least she’s not alone. ‘I’m gonna get you out.’

He drags his eyes from Vanya’s, takes a deep breath and grabs hold of the wheel. He can do this. He gives an experimental tug to see if it’s going to shift, prays that it does. For several seconds, nothing happens. He tightens his grip and pulls harder. The wheel squeaks as it gives and Klaus almost sags against the wall in relief. He grins down at Vanya who’s pressed as close to the glass as possible to watch his hands.

Neglected for years, Luther’s strength had actually loosened the wheel. It doesn’t move easily, but it moves, and he forces it around until he hears the seal break. The hiss of air sounds so loud to him, like a shaky sob in the echoing quiet, and he can’t imagine how much louder it must sound to Vanya. He yanks the door open and Vanya flings herself out of the soundproofed chamber, trips on the raised threshold and falls into his chest.

She’s shaking and sobbing and it takes him a moment to work out that she’s speaking as well. It’s a litany of _thank you_ and _I’m sorry_ and Klaus can’t do anything but hold her and kiss the top of her head as he cries himself. Ben brackets her on the other side, as close as he can get without phasing through her.

‘I’ve got you, we’ve got you,’ he says, over and over until Vanya scrapes together enough composure to pull her face out of his chest. She doesn’t quite let him go, keeps one hand fisted in the fabric of his vest.

She swipes at her eyes with her sleeves and says, ‘You came back. I didn’t think you would.’

He wishes he could scoff at her doubt and wave it off, but she’d watched them all walk away. Had an entire lifetime of being dismissed by them to look back on. He gestures at the nightmare behind her with a wry smile. ‘Turns out Reggie locked us both in boxes as kids, who’d have known? No-one deserves that. Doesn’t leave the best memories, I think you’ll agree.’ He shrugs, tugs at the end of a lock of Vanya’s hair.

Her hand comes up and closes around his wrist. ‘But Luther—’ she says. ‘You left.’

‘Last time I told Luther no, he threw me across the room,’ he says. ‘He only just worked out that Dad never gave a shit about us and isn’t taking it very well. Best to let him think he’s still in charge. _I’m Number One_ and all that.’ 

Vanya manages a tiny smile at his Luther impression and Klaus counts it a victory. Even if Ben is giving him an exasperated look for stealing the credit. It’s one little tiny baby step closer to forgiveness and even Ben can’t be too annoyed with him when it means Vanya’s not locked up anymore. He gently removes her hand from his vest and twists his wrist in her other hand to shift her grip and tangle their fingers together.

‘So what do you say we leave the childhood trauma behind?’ He steps backwards, drawing Vanya along with him, away from the spiky cube of silence. The close walls and low ceilings combined with the chill in the air are not doing good things for him.

Vanya glances over her shoulder and shudders. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘Oh, good!’ he says. She lets him pull her down the creepy corridor to the elevator. The elevator seems to rise much faster this time, maybe because this time Vanya’s standing beside him and not trapped at the bottom. ‘Let’s never come back here, okay? Let’s get Mom to make us some cocoa and we can talk about how little Number Seven has powers after all.’

‘Klaus!’ Ben snaps, with a warning nod at Vanya, but Klaus has never claimed to be tactful and Ben should be proud he managed this long without potentially shoving his foot in his mouth.

Vanya, thankfully, doesn’t look too offended, choking out a laugh that seems to shock her as much as it does him. ‘Who would have guessed?’ She steps out of the elevator looking brighter than he ever remembers seeing her and leads them to the kitchen.

Klaus puts another check in the little victories box. This isn’t the end of it, not by far; their lives are not that easy. Getting Vanya free is just step one. She’ll need training, particularly as her loss of control had been near fatal for Allison and actually fatal for Leonard Jenkins or whatever his name was. Luther will need to be coaxed away from knee-jerk reactions. And hey, maybe Five got his equations wrong again and the world will still end tomorrow. But until then, Klaus is going to beg his Mom for hot cocoa and try to connect with his sister.


End file.
